Educating Engineering Educators to Nurture 21st Century Indian Engineers

Farrokh Mistree; Jitesh H. Panchal; Pradeep Kashinath Waychal

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Conference: 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Publication Date: June 15, 2014
Start Date: June 15, 2014
End Date: June 18, 2014
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Continuing Professional Development Division Technical Session 1
Tagged Division: Continuing Professional Development
Page Count: 17
Page Numbers: 24.447.1 - 24.447.17
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--20338
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/20338
Download Count: 479

Paper Authors

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Farrokh Mistree University of Oklahoma

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Farrokh Mistree holds the L. A. Comp Chair in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. His passion is to have fun in providing an opportunity for highly motivated and talented people to learn how to define and achieve their dreams.

Farrokh received his B.Tech. (Hons) degree in naval architecture in 1967 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. He has co-authored two textbooks, one monograph, and more than 350 technical papers dealing with the design of mechanical, thermal, and structural systems, ships, and aircraft. His design experience spans the areas of mechanical, aeronautical, structural, and industrial engineering. He has taught courses in engineering design, naval architecture, solid mechanics, operations research, and computer science and supervised 28 doctoral students and more than 50 master’s students, all of whom are well-placed around the world. Twelve of his doctoral students are pursuing highly successful careers in academia, and he has mentored two graduate students who now own several for-profit colleges in Orissa, India.

Farrokh is a Fellow of ASME, an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a member of RINA and SNAME. He was named the ASME Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Engineering Design Educator in 2011. In September 2012, he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology and received the Life Time Achievement Award from the International Society for Agile Manufacturing, Lafayette, La., in December of that year.

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Jitesh H. Panchal Purdue University

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Dr. Jitesh Panchal is an assistant professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. He received his B.Tech. (2000) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and M.S. (2003) and Ph.D. (2005) in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Panchal's research interests are in computational design of complex engineering systems with a focus on three areas: concurrent products and materials design; collective systems innovation; and cyber-physical systems for design and manufacturing. Co-author of the book titled Integrated Design of Multiscale, Multifunctional Materials and Products, he is a recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a Young Engineer Award, and two best paper awards from ASME's CIE division, and a university silver medal from IIT Guwahati.

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Pradeep Kashinath Waychal Innovation Centre, COEP orcid.org/0000-0001-8142-2464

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Pradeep Waychal has close to 30 years of experience in renowned business and academic organizations. He has been the founder and head of the Innovation Center of the College of Engineering Pune. Prior to that, for over 20 years he worked with a multinational corporation, Patni Computer Systems, where he played varied roles in delivery, corporate, and sales organizations. He has led large international business relationships and incubated the Centre of Excellence for business intelligence, process consulting, and verification and validation. He has headed the corporate product and technology innovations and quality and delivery innovation departments. Pradeep was on the top senior management group before pursuing his academic, research, and social interests. Before Patni, he worked at IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, SGGS College of Engineering, and Crompton Greaves R & D Electronics in different research and academic positions.

Pradeep Waychal also has published papers in peer-reviewed journals, presented keynote/invited talks in many high profile international conferences, and is involved in a few copyrights and patents. His teams have won a range of awards in six sigma and knowledge management at international events. He has been associated with initiatives from NASSCOM, CSI, ISO and ISBSG among others. Pradeep Waychal has completed Ph.D. in the area of information technology and innovation management from IIT, Bombay. He is credited with earning one of the fastest Ph.D.s, even as compared to full-time research scholars. He has an M.Tech. in control engineering from IIT Delhi with CGPA of 10/10. He is a graduate from the College of Engineering Pune in electronics and telecommunication. His current research interests are engineering education, software engineering, and innovation management.

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Abstract

Educating the Educators for Nurturing the 21st Century Indian EngineersAbstractAn educational institution has to be known by the faculty, it keeps. Its other pillars - students’intake and infrastructure – are largely dependent on the faculty. Any educational system,therefore, has to focus on educating the faculty on ongoing basis. While ample research has beenreported on the requirements of the 21st century engineers, its deployment is not at satisfactorylevel, especially in the Indian engineering education system. This has to be addressed as India isendowed with impressive demographic dividend, as compared to many developed economiesand is poised to become the major workforce supplier in the coming decades. With our Indianorigin but international exposure, we have designed, developed and delivered a two-dayworkshop for educating the educators in the emerging Indian economy. The objective of theworkshop was to introduce the participants to the changing needs of engineering education, andto illustrate an approach that we have developed over the past decade to address the needs. In thispaper, we present the design and implementation of the workshop.The context of the workshop is set by Richard Riley’s beautifully articulated statement: “we arecurrently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist using technologies that haven’t beeninvented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet”. While we cannot listtechnologies and problems; we can envision some basic themes around which future mayrevolve. To enable a focused discussion of topics, we imagine a future in which individuals areempowered to participate in the global value network where geographically distributed people(including engineers) collaboratively develop, build, and test solutions to complex socio-techno-eco problems in wired and interconnected world. We posit that to be successful in the future, ourengineering students need to be empowered to develop white-space competencies and learn torealize sustainable engineering systems.The workshop was designed to be highly interactive in nature. We used a model coursedeveloped over the past 15 years, which embodies threshold concepts such as the ‘question forthe semester’ (Q4S), self-evaluation and learning communities, relying on developingcompetencies to fulfill the learning objectives, etc. The model course embedded all the conceptsespoused in the workshop. The approach was based on the principles from mass customizationand competency-based learning rather than one-size-fits-all content delivery. The workshopstarted with identifying competencies and meta-competencies required for the 21st century Indianengineers. Methods for identifying white-space competencies, dilemmas and managing themwere discussed. The participants tackled many discussion questions such as developing Q4S foreducating the 21st century Indian engineer and concluded with the course that they would like todevelop with the concepts learnt in the workshop. The participant pool consisted of 32 Indianeducators from different parts of the country. The workshop received positive feedback and theparticipants went back with a resolve to deploy the knowledge that they acquired at least in acourse. The paper will include the design, implementation, and key learning of the authors fromthe workshop. 1The outline of the paper is as follows:1. Indian engineering education system – current status – problem space 1.1. Students – supply, demand, kinds of jobs 1.2. Faculty’s current status 1.3. Educational infrastructure2. Competencies required for the 21st century Indian engineer – problem space 2.1. Competencies and meta-competencies 2.2. Needs for educating the educators for the 21st century3. Designing a workshop for educating faculty for educating the 21st century Indian engineer – Solution space 3.1. Workshop philosophy (Top level architecture of the solution) 3.2. Specific objectives 3.3. Core elements of the strategy 3.3.1. Learning to learn 3.3.2. Mass customization 3.3.3. Identifying competencies and learning, etc. 3.4. How the core elements are put together in the form of a workshop 3.4.1. Overview and architecture of the workshop 3.4.2. Specific Talks 3.4.3. Activities/games etc.4. Implementation of the workshop: Workshop structure etc. 4.1. Participants 4.2. Discussion questions 4.3. Learning, challenges they picked up 4.4. Feedback – qualitative and quantitative 4.5. Illustration of a course design by a participant5. Closing thoughts 5.1. What the workshop organizers learnt 5.2. Future extensions, limitations, etc. 2

Citation
Format

Mistree, F., & Panchal, J. H., & Waychal, P. K. (2014, June), Educating Engineering Educators to Nurture 21st Century Indian Engineers Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20338

TY - CPAPER
AB - Educating the Educators for Nurturing the 21st Century Indian EngineersAbstractAn educational institution has to be known by the faculty, it keeps. Its other pillars - students’intake and infrastructure – are largely dependent on the faculty. Any educational system,therefore, has to focus on educating the faculty on ongoing basis. While ample research has beenreported on the requirements of the 21st century engineers, its deployment is not at satisfactorylevel, especially in the Indian engineering education system. This has to be addressed as India isendowed with impressive demographic dividend, as compared to many developed economiesand is poised to become the major workforce supplier in the coming decades. With our Indianorigin but international exposure, we have designed, developed and delivered a two-dayworkshop for educating the educators in the emerging Indian economy. The objective of theworkshop was to introduce the participants to the changing needs of engineering education, andto illustrate an approach that we have developed over the past decade to address the needs. In thispaper, we present the design and implementation of the workshop.The context of the workshop is set by Richard Riley’s beautifully articulated statement: “we arecurrently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist using technologies that haven’t beeninvented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet”. While we cannot listtechnologies and problems; we can envision some basic themes around which future mayrevolve. To enable a focused discussion of topics, we imagine a future in which individuals areempowered to participate in the global value network where geographically distributed people(including engineers) collaboratively develop, build, and test solutions to complex socio-techno-eco problems in wired and interconnected world. We posit that to be successful in the future, ourengineering students need to be empowered to develop white-space competencies and learn torealize sustainable engineering systems.The workshop was designed to be highly interactive in nature. We used a model coursedeveloped over the past 15 years, which embodies threshold concepts such as the ‘question forthe semester’ (Q4S), self-evaluation and learning communities, relying on developingcompetencies to fulfill the learning objectives, etc. The model course embedded all the conceptsespoused in the workshop. The approach was based on the principles from mass customizationand competency-based learning rather than one-size-fits-all content delivery. The workshopstarted with identifying competencies and meta-competencies required for the 21st century Indianengineers. Methods for identifying white-space competencies, dilemmas and managing themwere discussed. The participants tackled many discussion questions such as developing Q4S foreducating the 21st century Indian engineer and concluded with the course that they would like todevelop with the concepts learnt in the workshop. The participant pool consisted of 32 Indianeducators from different parts of the country. The workshop received positive feedback and theparticipants went back with a resolve to deploy the knowledge that they acquired at least in acourse. The paper will include the design, implementation, and key learning of the authors fromthe workshop. 1The outline of the paper is as follows:1. Indian engineering education system – current status – problem space 1.1. Students – supply, demand, kinds of jobs 1.2. Faculty’s current status 1.3. Educational infrastructure2. Competencies required for the 21st century Indian engineer – problem space 2.1. Competencies and meta-competencies 2.2. Needs for educating the educators for the 21st century3. Designing a workshop for educating faculty for educating the 21st century Indian engineer – Solution space 3.1. Workshop philosophy (Top level architecture of the solution) 3.2. Specific objectives 3.3. Core elements of the strategy 3.3.1. Learning to learn 3.3.2. Mass customization 3.3.3. Identifying competencies and learning, etc. 3.4. How the core elements are put together in the form of a workshop 3.4.1. Overview and architecture of the workshop 3.4.2. Specific Talks 3.4.3. Activities/games etc.4. Implementation of the workshop: Workshop structure etc. 4.1. Participants 4.2. Discussion questions 4.3. Learning, challenges they picked up 4.4. Feedback – qualitative and quantitative 4.5. Illustration of a course design by a participant5. Closing thoughts 5.1. What the workshop organizers learnt 5.2. Future extensions, limitations, etc. 2
AU - Farrokh Mistree
AU - Jitesh H. Panchal
AU - Pradeep Kashinath Waychal
CY - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA - 2014/06/15
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Educating Engineering Educators to Nurture 21st Century Indian Engineers
UR - https://peer.asee.org/20338
DO - 10.18260/1-2--20338
ER -